Managing Your Codes

How to add concepts to Spark Editor?

When you start a new CQL project, the first thing you should do is to populate the data dictionary before you start writing CQL.

This can be done two different ways

• Bulk uploading codes by uploading a FHIR CodeSystem resource as a json file (containing all the concepts) to the Spark editor.
• Manually add individual codes to the project

Bulk uploading a data dictionary as a FHIR CodeSystem

To populate the data dictionary using a FHIR CodeSystem,

• Navigate to the New CodeSystem page from the left sidebar: Data Dictionary -> New CodeSystem

There are two ways to upload a CodeSystem file:

• You can drag and drop one or more json files onto the drag-and-drop area on the new CodeSystem page.
• Click on the drag-and-drop area, and a file selection dialog box will open.
  • Select the json files you want to upload and click 'Open'.
• Whether you drag and drop or select the CodeSystem files, if successfully selected, the table below will show the name, url, and the number of concepts within each CodeSystem file.

If you accidentally select a CodeSystem file that you don't want to upload, you can remove it by clicking the x button at the end of its row.

• After selecting your files, click the Upload button. Your CodeSystem files will be uploaded, and all the concepts within them will become available for use in the Spark Editor.

Adding individual codes to the data dictionary of a project

You can now add individual codes to the data dictionary of a project, this allows you to add codes that are not available in the FHIR CodeSystem file, or selectively add codes to the data dictionary.

• In order to add codes, you can navigate to the New CodeSystem page and click on the Add Codes Manually option
• This will open up the form to add codes manually
• Enter the Code and it's definition by filling the Display
• Click Add Code button to add the code to the data dictionary

Updating the concepts

The concepts used in a CDSS project can change over time; new concepts might be added, and old concepts might be removed. When writing CQL, you will need to keep the concepts up-to-date within the Spark Editor to ensure they are available for parsing and autocompletion.

To update your list of concepts, navigate to the same page used for uploading a new CodeSystem (Data Dictionary -> New CodeSystem) and upload the updated CodeSystem FHIR resource json file containing the new or modified codes.

In FHIR, a CodeSystem is uniquely identified by its canonical URL. Ensure that the updated CodeSystem file has the same canonical url attribute as the original CodeSystem you are replacing.

WARNING

If the updated CodeSystem does not have a canonical url matching the original one, a new CodeSystem will be created instead of updating the existing one, potentially leading to duplication of codes.

Deleting concepts

To delete concepts, you will have to delete the CodeSystem that the concepts are associated with.

In order to delete a CodeSystem, you first have to navigate to the Manage Data Dictionary page from the left sidebar (Data Dictionary -> Manage Data Dictionary).

And there you will see all the code systems associated with your project, and under the Action section, you will find the delete button.

You can click the delete button to delete any CodeSystem that you don't plan on using.

TIP

Deleted a CodeSystem by accident? Don't worry, you can always go back and add the CodeSystem again.